Disney Research Creates New Fabrication Technique for Kinetic Wire Characters

Consider how an animatronic or posable character, such as a puppet or toy, is traditionally designed. The designer has to engineer a movable skeleton for the character, largely through experience, trial-and-error, and guesswork. Rigid joints allow the skeleton to move, but are animated after the fact. This new fabrication technique developed by Disney Research approaches the problem differently, with flexible wire skeletons that are designed computationally.

The Bend-It workflow starts with the designer deciding the shape of the skeleton and how they want it to move. For example, if they want to replicate the movement of a finger, they can determine the arcs that the finger follows as it contracts, as well as where the finger actually bends. Their system then computes how a simple spring wire can be bent to achieve that movement. It decides where to place relief bends, and which bend patterns to use in order to produce the desired movement.

After verifying that the movement is accurate in a simulation, the real, physical wires are fabricated on a DIY CNC wire-bending machine. Simple motors or servos are connected to the wires to provide actuation. The result is complex, lifelike movement that would have been extremely labor-intensive to achieve through manual design. Thanks to the computationally-generated bends in the wire, kinetic wire characters are able to walk fluidly and grasp objects naturally. The technique would likely work well with existing 3D animation skeletal models, which makes it practical for bringing Disney characters to life.